Bill Collins - the Metric Time pages

WHY Metric Time?

A StudyWeb Excellence Award winner

Best educational research web site

OK. Everything - or very nearly everything - is METRIC. What about TIME?? We still struggle along with 12-month years, anything from 28- to 31-day months, 60-second minutes, 60-minute hours, 24 hours in a day. 24? Why 24? - I hear you ask. Good question.

Granted, I'm not a horologist, but I've been thinking about this. All right, not since about 1984, but I'd like to share with you some thoughts I had then about temporal re-engineering.

I think it's about time we did a really big re-hash of our temporal environment. And I'm not talking about subtle, minor, 'it-won't-really-affect-your-day-to-day-routine' type changes - such as the "leap-second". This is serious, folks. I have a few proposals.

Firstly, I'd like to see our calendar re-worked to give us some semblance of logic. What do you think? Are you sick of wondering how many days are in this month? Is it 28? 29? 31 perhaps?

Secondly, I have come up with a couple of proposals that would change the way our day is divided up. The basis of these proposals is the decimal unit (10), the global metric system base unit. I've called it "Metric Time".

Follow the links to each of these proposals, and find out what radical changes I am proposing...

Our existing calendar

I have come up with 2 proposals to change the existing calendar - which, you have to admit, is currently all over the shop. Check them out by clicking on the Calendar reform link on the left.
Can't see the menu on the left? CLICK HERE.

Now for the second instalment in my radical horological re-engineering proposal, which re-designs the actual time. My proposals are really only a re-organisation of what time we already have, so it won't make you any younger, allow time-travel, fade the curtains, or do anything strange to the farmyard animals. Trust me.

Time as we know it - Proposal #1

This first proposal was dreamt up whilst I was studying Surveying. I looked at the ways we had to do strange conversions from minutes, seconds, etc. to decimals and back again to get our answers. I then came to the conclusion that the 60-second/60-minute system wasn't aligned with out base-10 mathematics, and found that time was similarly illogical, from a base-10 maths viewpoint. I then sought to come up with something different. This is it.
Click on the link to check out my ruminations about temporal re-engineering (proposal #1).

Time as we know it - Proposal #2

After posting my first proposal on my web site some three years ago, I have recieved a lot of feedback (see below). This has made me think a bit more about metric time, and I have developed a second proposal. Click on the link on the left.

The amazing Swatch Internet Time experiment!

My Bostonian horologist friend, Molly Kalkstein (see below) and I undertook an experiment in metric time. Molly is writing a book, and we decided that to really understand the concept of metric time, one has to live it, think it, breathe it, and generally be totally immersed in it. To this end, we lived on a totally-metric time system for a period of 10 days. We allowed no conventional time clocks to enter our lives for this period, and used only metric time for all our activities. We both kept diaries of our acitvities and thoughts during this period.

Hard, you say? You bet. The experiment/project ran from 13th through until 23rd September 2000. For metric timepieces, we used Swatch Beat watches, which have the facility to display Swatch's innovative new concept - Internet Beat Time.

You can find out more about the project by clicking the Metric time Experiment link on the left.

Can't see the menu on the left? CLICK HERE.

E-mails I have received...

Well, I have to admit, the response to my metric time concept has overwhelmed me. I have answered all of the people who have e-mailed me, and I would like to include their comments here. I have created a text file of all the e-mails I have received. You can look at the file by clicking on the e-mails link on the left. You can save the file using your browser's File/Save option.

A metric time clock program

I have a DOS-based metric time clock program that you can download. It was written by Pieter Van Balen in Holland, and displays in a graphical way what my 20-hour clock would look like. Click on the Download link on the left.

Metric Time - links to other sites

I have recieved a lot of e-mails about my proposals, and you will find a 'links' page, which lists the links found in the e-mail messages mentioned above, plus others I've found along the way. Click Metric time links. Can't see the menu on the left? CLICK HERE.

"Making Time: Calendars and Clocks for a New Millennium"

A brilliant young Bostonian horologist, Molly Kalkstein, is currently writing a book about the phenomenology of time, part of which includes the concept of metrication and globalisation of time into the future. Molly sent me an e-mail which appears in the text file I've included (see above), and she is keen to hear from people who are interested in "time".

You can e-mail Molly at molly@pinkeraser.com

I have won a Web Award!

This page has won an award. "StudyWeb" has voted this page as one of the best educational resources of the web. If you would like to learn more about StudyWeb, you should visit www.studyweb.com .

To all of you who read these pages, thank you for listening to my proposal.
If you would like to share your thoughts, please e-mail me at collinsb@ozemail.com.au
If you would like to see more of my website, Click here